RAQs | Sarika Patel

RAQs: Rarely Asked Questions

I wish we asked each other better questions to get to know who people are rather than what they do. These are the questions that I have for you, but in the spirit of this one-way megaphone I’ll go first.

What're the little things that feel like big things?

Fresh flowers, FaceTiming my nephew, finding new fronds on my birds nest fern. Handwritten letters, throw blankets on the beach, reading outside. When old friends meet new friends and share deep laughs. Good tiramisu and vintage jeans with the perfect fit.

What’re two seemingly contradictory ideas you juggle?

For as long as I can remember I’ve proudly called myself independent and held it as a badge of honor. What I thought was a reflection of my self-sufficiency is really just a reflection of how modern society villainizes dependence and fetishizes independence in ways that are unnatural and unhealthy. I’m drawn to the idea of community living and its role in our overall well-being. I'd love help find a solution for us to collectively reconcile the two both in theory and practice by unromanticizing the former (independence) and destigmatizing the latter (community dependence).

What if you could do it all over again?

I think about this all the time. So many decisions, both big and small, have worked in harmony to get me to where I am right now. Every decision is also many hundred decisions of the paths that we won’t take. Today I nurture my natural curiosity as a researcher in favor of stability but maybe I could have nurtured my adventurous spirit as a deep sea diver. I'll never know what could have been. But I truly believe that our unlived lives, while they seem like a part of the distant past, still exist within us; they can come to fruition as soon as we believe that life is not meant to be linear and that starting over is always an option.